Hearing God: Not the Voice

Hearing God: Not the Voice

(Matthew 4:1-11)

10:30 am, Sunday, October 6, 2013, Windsor UBC, J G White

Many stories could be told of an unusual Nova Scotian woman, years ago, who took up a hitch-hiking ministry.  She was very zealous about talking to people everywhere about the Lord.  As she hitch-hiked around her county, she talked a lot about Jesus to those who picked her up, whether they wanted to hear or not!  Sadly, she was thought of in her home town as eccentric, at best, or an unwell religious fanatic, at worst.

I knew this lady and heard from her all sorts of things she had been directed to do by the Lord.   Hitch-hike in that direction.  Stop and speak to so-and-so.  Stop for a meal with someone else.  I wondered if she thought God told her what clothes to put on each morning, or even what way to hang the toilet paper roll in the bathroom. 

One story from her life was about the New Yorker.  She told friends in her church one day that she was praying for a car.  She needed a car.  Weeks later, she mentioned she was praying, in particular, for to Lord to provide a Chrysler New Yorker.  That sounded rather a specific request for the Almighty.   

But soon, her friend’s jaws dropped when she sailed along one day driving a New Yorker!

What the friends of the woman later found out was that a close pastor friend of hers, who’d had this big car, was thinking of getting himself a new car; and then he did; & finally decided to give his old car, the New Yorker, to the hitch-hiker. 

Did our God guide that woman to pray for that particular car, and then answer that prayer?  Or was it her own voice, her own ideas, which came to fruition by the kindness of a pastor? 

Our listening to God question today is How to know what is Not the Voice of God.  The still small voice has several rivals.  We are not told explicitly how God the Holy Spirit led Jesus to spend His forty days in the wilderness, and we can also wonder about how Satan actually expressed his temptations to Christ.  We’ll look at this event in more detail momentarily.

First, let’s notice three mistaken interpretations about life here with God.  Three ways we can be tempted to think God is going to guide us.  The first is the Message-a-Minute view.  And this was really what the hitch-hiking Christian expected.  God could and should guide a believer every moment of the day in every decision to be made.  Really?

This is actually neither necessary nor completely good for us.  I don’t see Paul or Peter, or even Jesus, having constant promptings from God the Father about every word to say, action to take, and thing to avoid.  The New Testament does not paint that kind of a picture for us.  We can get definite divine guidance daily, but not about every moment’s activity. 

E. Stanley Jones wisely wrote,

I believe in miracle, but not too much miracle, for too much miracle would weaken us, make us dependent on miracle instead of our obedience to natural law.  Just enough miracle to let us know He is there, but not too much, lest we depend on it when we should depend on our own initiative and on His orderly process for our development. (A Song of Ascents, p.191)

Another common idea about God’s will and guidance is the Whatsoever-Comes view.  Whatsoever happens is, in the end, what God wanted, after all.  The Lord is sovereign, of course, powerfully in charge of everything, so everything happening is according to plan.

I talked briefly about this last Sunday morning.  One problem with this is it actually leaves out the need for God to guide us consciously.  Also, it leaves out the powers of evil in this world, which still accomplish bad and wrong things.  Wrong things do happen, and for the wrong reasons.  Thanks be to God that He can do good things in the midst of disaster!

Some of our Old Testament stories challenge us when thinking about how unchanging God’s plan is.  Read Exodus 32 and remember how Yahweh determined to destroy the people, after they built and worshiped the golden calf, and start over with Moses and his family.  God said to Moses, “Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation.” 

But Moses had a real heart-to-heart with the LORD, and did not accept this plan.  Moses’ prayer was answered when God relented, and “the LORD changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.”  Even a human can work on the master plan with the Master Himself. 

Thirdly, there is the It’s-All-in-the-Bible View.  The verse that tells us the disciples were all in one accord is not guidance to buying a Honda car.  The New Testament book after Philemon is not telling the men of the house to make the coffee: He-brews.  I recall my Old Testament professor telling of a man in a church where he’d pastored, who was convinced a scripture was telling him to apply cream cheese to his wife’s hair. 

This greatest of all books is not like the owner’s manual of a car.  Every detail of your life is not secretly hidden in it.  Then again, maybe the Bible is like an automobile manual: when I look for an answer about some detail of my car, it’s not in the book!  The principles and inspiration for our lives are in the Bible; much detailed guidance must come from the Holy Spirit communing with our human spirits. 

So, as we get to know the Voice of the Shepherd, we must guard against other ideas that vie for attention.  People sometimes wonder, and rightly so, about the voice of Satan.  Not often like the deep, scary voice of some demon in the movies, the Evil One will communicate in one’s own thoughts, the voice of people around us, and even use the scriptures. 

Matthew’s record of Jesus’ forty days in the desert is instructive.  But you might want to turn in your Bibles now, not to Matthew, but to Deuteronomy 8.

Forty days and forty nights, fasting in the desert.  It’s a desert; it’s deserted; and there’s no dessert!  Or even bread and water.  And Jesus is tempted… by the Tempter. 

Some of the round stones nearby look like loaves of bread, freshly cooked.  “So you are the Son of God: turn the stones to bread.”  Jesus finds the answer in a scripture.  He does not have a copy of it with Him, of course; just about no one did.  He had memorized much of it.  Such as Deuteronomy 8:3…  One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.  Perhaps knowing the Bible – a lot of it – will help us recognize the ideas that look good but are not.

Jesus saw Himself at the pinnacle of the Temple in Jerusalem.  “Throw yourself down,” the Accuser suggested.  The Bible, Psalm 91, says God will send angels to protect you, “so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.” 

No.  Jesus remembers another phrase from the fifth book of Moses.  Deuteronomy 6:16.  “Do not put the LORD your God to the test.”  We too must remember that the Bible can be used rightly and wrongly.  God may speak here; but the Evil One quotes it too!

Thirdly, Jesus gets a vision of the kingdoms of the world.  By bowing to the devil, could they all become His?  “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only Him,” says Deuteronomy 6:13.  Jesus finds the right path, the Tempter leaves, and Christ is cared for by better visitors, angels attending to His needs.

Hearing from the Tempter does not mean you are worse than others, or even that you are possessed or some such thing.  Jesus heard the voice of Satan!  We may remember that Peter the apostle at least once spoke for Satan!  “Get behind me, Satan,” is what Jesus said to him on that occasion.  Recognizing the sources of the voices and ideas that come to us – this is key.  Then we obey God, and not the rivals. 

And so, “hearing God” is found in our day-to-day experience.  James Dobson described a prayer when seeking the will of God.  “I get down on my knees and say, ‘Lord, I need to know what you want me to do, and I am listening.  Please speak to me through my friends, books, magazines I pick up and read, and through circumstances.’”  (“The Will of God” radio broadcast, December 3, 1982)

The Lord whose speaking we grow to recognize is the best Guide and Friend we can rely upon. 

 Some years ago, a pastor was one day called by a parishioner whose husband had recently died.  The woman informed the minister that God had told her to give the husband’s suits to him.  Would he please come over, she asked, to see if they suits would fit? 

The pastor very sensibly replied, “If God told you to give them to me, they’ll fit.”  (Bud Robinson, as in Hearing God, Dallas Willard, p. 205)

We believe in a competent God!

A God who speaks, every so quietly, subtly, and surely. 

A Spirit who wants to have fellowship with us day-by-day even more than we do. 

A Saviour who will be our Good Shepherd, and whose voice we can learn to recognize and follow. 

And a Saviour who speaks to our souls again today, as we eat bread together, and drink the fruit of the vine.